Collaboration is just plain missing!

LegacyUser

Nathalie Connor said: Changes to People You Are Watching
Week Ending: 29 March 2020
17 People 122 Changes

This is the second time someone has run roughshod through data I have been working on for 3 years with two others around the world. One of the Irish lines has been very difficult to unearth. The individual who made these changes started off by changing people born in Country Kerry to Antrim (clearly not the same people) and went from there and attacked four or five other lines! The crux of this is always Americans attaching their ancestors to just anybody because their records said the ancestor was born in Ireland-no more data than that! This is unacceptable!
This has been an ongoing frustration for years.
That someone can make 122 changes-some of them ridiculous - adding United Kingdom to addresses, which I don't feel the need to use. Removing the church name in a baptismal address etc is totally unacceptable. It is there for a reason.
The work that this will cause me is also unacceptable. And you know what, I no longer accept the 'newbie defense'. It is simple logic that was not employed.
This individual, from what I can gather, has absolutely NO RELATION TO ANYONE IN MY TREE!! Talk about adding insult to injury.
I have precious few American connections, for which I am relieved.
Protocol in my country is that you contact people first, ask questions, discuss, then make changes as appropriate. The so-called collaborative method simply isn't!
I want compensation for what was done so that the truth is reflected and that erroneous information is not copied.

It goes without saying that I will no longer be using this site as this is the second time this has happened and nothing was done the first time.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The open-edit nature of FamilySearch FamilyTree is pretty much "fixed", so about the only thing you can do is to reduce the amount of changes that a person makes.

There are a few people who have been adversely impacted by changes and you are, evidently one of them.

Your protocol is not practiced on a world-wide basis.

But there are some things you can do to slow down most of the changes. I have found these to be effective. Before I repost the method that I have found to be largely effective there is one thing that all persons who use FamilySearch FamilyTree should do:

Maintain a separate tree that cannot be changed by anyone else, such as a local tree under a family tree management program such as those which fully integrate with FamilySearch FamilyTree (FSFT). three of them are fully certified to do this: Ancestral Quest, Legacy, and Roots Magic. Another good alternative is the online Ancestry.com tree. All three give you a back up to what you do with FSFT.

One other thing that needs to be done, but is something that has been strongly recommended by many users: a stronger compare facility when changes are made so that warnings pop up with regard to the changes being incorporated. Warnings would indicate changes in the vitals and family that do not match what previously existed. So changes have been good, but they do not provide warnings against wholesale changes that are often made without any regard to what previously existed, whether by keyboard or ingested via some third-party program.

Now, to what I have found effective: the following is a boilerplate (and something anyone can use when working with others) that I post from time to time. You will be familiar with much of the material and it appears you have a lot of experience, so the introductory material will not be new information:

FamilySearch FamilyTree is a single tree that is a collaborative effort, built around an open-edit model, allowing any person, including yourself to add to and make changes on any person who lived throughout history, including all of our deceased relatives.

There is no "my tree" in FamilySearch FamilyTree — it is a tree for all mankind. If you have found errors, you need to know why those errors are there. It could be that someone incorrectly combined another person's record with your relative. It could be that someone found a source that they thought applied to your relative, but it did not. It could be that someone just knew that their information was correct and entered that.

There are sites that support independent trees and building them. FamilySearch is not one of those sites.

If you are unfamiliar with how to work with the massive tree (now containing over 1.2 Billion persons), The Family History Guide (http://thefhguide.com/) is an approved training resource. It not only contains procedures for working with the site and the massive tree, but also exercises for you to use.

As to the incorrect information -- Those who make changes usually believe they are related to the person for which they are making changes. Their changes may be valid, invalid, or contain errors and may lack support from primary and secondary source material. Or the changes may be based on misinformation, or information that was copied from an unreliable source.

The desire to belong to an elite group of people, such as Mayflower Descendants, the Daughters of the American Revolution, or the Sons of the American Revolution has likewise produced some inventive genealogies.

Not all participants who add to and make changes to existing material have the same level of knowledge and experience. Novices or Newbies often try their best to be useful, but they can and will make mistakes (… [truncated]

LegacyUser

Paul said: Yes, it's awful when something like this happens. Two days ago, I spent several hours correcting relationships against one of the WRIGHTSON individuals I am watching. I was so pleased to see the relevant children correctly positioned under his first and second wives. I added all the sources available, then sent the other user a message explaining my actions in detail. His response? No reply to my message, but he changed everything back to how he had inputted it before.

I've now put everything right again, sent two further messages, but am still edgy waiting for him to reverse my changes again, without any thought of collaboration.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Unfortunately, many people have a story like this or two like my recent experience:

https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

Please don't give up here. Tom offers some very good suggestions. Nothing was done the first time, because no one is in charge of any profile in Family Tree except those specific users working on those profiles, namely, you. However, marking as watched all the key individuals in your ancestors, quickly reverting incorrect changes, and developing a quick educational statement you can send out as a message to people making errors can lead to good long term stability in the information in Family Tree.